Matt’s Home Lab Future
#Matts #Home #Lab #Future
“The Linux Cast”
Today I talk about my home lab plans. Painfully noobish though I am.
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Concluzion: Matt’s Home Lab Future – linux,open source,apps,the linux cast,thelinuxcast,linux home lab,home lab,home lab noob
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For ZFS, ask Wendell from Level1techs 🙂
Homelab videos? Sure, why not? I'd love to hear you discuss all the challenges you run into and how you resolve them. I know I'd learn a lot from that. And, for me at least, it would definitely be engaging content. Cheers! 😊
I started with a NUC (minipc) and JBOD USB drives. Originally it had proxmox, I then clustered it with my dell rack that I picked up recently. But now my dell runs RHEL ("dev" license = free for 16 machines, fully functional), rock-solid stability and I throw up VM's and containers as needed and run NFS off it. My NUC is used for more specific purposes now (also RHEL).
Today, I'm about to replace tmux with zellij on all of them (vm's too) 🙂
If I was to go-back in time, I'd actually start with rasberry-pi.
BTW Matt – Try cockpit for a nice web-interface for managing your host. Plus if you are still learning docker (me to) try podman instead. Redhat have a download for (podman in action) ebook which is free.
One OS that you could try on your homeserver is TrueNAS Scale. It's similar to unraid, having a main focus on having a software raid with the additional functionalities of a nice web interface, easy configuration for smb and nfs sharing and also virtualization support.
Don't give up on proxmox. I have been using proxmox for about a year. Host had xfce/awesomewm and windows vm for gaming with gpu pass through. Host was using igpu vm 1080ti.
Welcome to the rabbit hole
I am just starting homdlab myself , hope to see more videos like this
Really surprised you were running into so much trouble. I am using a number of older Dell Optiplexs, with an Ubuntu LTS installed on each, running Docker Swarm and GlusterFS to operate all of machines as a cluster. Self-hosting all kinds of stuff including jellyfin, home assistant, photoprism, nginx, bind9 dns, various dedicated game servers like valheim and cs… The biggest issue I have is the availability of replacement parts since the mb and power supplies are relatively customized, now that the machines are old enough to start seeing typical electronics types of failures.
Matt, I also went on this journey over the past year and a half. Running Proxmox on an old PC I have. You'll figure out the Proxmox and Docker stuff just fine over time. I also did the LearnLinuxTV tutorials. It's not too insanely complicated once you get into a rhythm (although the storage stuff is still a bit over my head). You just get a feel for the commands after awhile. Unfortunately, what is really going to make you bash your head on your desk is the networking aspect. You install something on docker and you try to access it on another PC and it doesn't work. You setup the firewall rules and it doesn't work. You ensured the service is running and it doesn't work. You confirm the port is open and it doesn't work. That stuff right there drives me insane. Because no amount of commands is going to get you there. You just need a fundamental knowledge of networking and all these obscure tools. It's going to drive you mad and eat away days of your life. But I still push on and slowly get there.
Idk how far you are from stlouis but I have a 4u, 4CPU, 128gb of ram , redundant every thing server you can have.
Proxmox and Unraid can accomplish more or less the same thing for a homelab. Proxmox is much better with VMs, Unraid has built-in Docker and NAS solutions.
When it comes to home labs you don't need to buy expensive hardware to run home lab. You have insane amount of open sourve software avaliable on linux. With hardware and open source software avaliable you run on top of linux for 500 usd you can make monster of a home lab
$300 for electricity? What are you doing ,dude, running a heating central or melting / casting iron? 🙂
Or living in Cali?
Here in Europe, where everything is generally more expensive, my winter bill is like $100 and in the summer it's at least 2 times lower. And I heat water, heat the apartment, cook, work, etc, and it's all in this.
I would be very interested to watch your HomeLab development, a lot of people will have interest too, I'm sure.
As for me – I don't need this myself, for the reasons you've said.
But I plan somewhere soon in the future to make my "home" super mini "lab" remotely – basically just a VPS for Podman (or Docker, not sure yet), pihole and wireguard, maybe Homepage (not a website, but that home lab soft – "Homepage") with some small extras too, but not more than that. It will be small, practical, not expensive, not making me live or pay like I'm running an airport, as you've put it.
At the moment I'm exploring OpenWRT and it's so cool, although it's a limited playground and it's not that much for playing, just want to setup some things, as I want to and leave it at that.
using 3x mini pc versions as my homelab right now via proxmox, I use a 24bay supermicro for the NAS/storage.
You absolutely can use ZFS with 16GB (or less) of RAM. ZFS will use just about as much ram as you give it for the cache (ARC), but everything in there is evictable so it shouldn't interfere with day to day operations. Now you will probably see a performance difference by adding more ram, but its not a requirement
I still fail to see in what way a "homelab" is a lab
I use a mini-PC (not pre-build) as a home server for various stuff (samba network share, websites, gitlab, bots etc.)
Second hand HP workstations are a good choice for this type of project. They usually have ECC memory and sufficient PCIe slots (no NVMe slots but these can be added with a PCIe/NVMe adapter card). BIOS upgrade files are still available even for old machines. The downsides are non-standard power supplies (different dimensions and 12 volt only) and cpu coolers – so if any of these parts fail replacements are nearly as expensive as another second hand machine. For disks I recommend considering SAS drives. Cables can be longer than SATA allows and a PCIe SAS controller can typically support 8 drives. Second hand SAS disks can also be bought at less cost than SATA disks of the same capacity, corporate users will often replace their disks when they reach 5 years of use (their design life or warranty period) but they can still work reliably for many more years. Matt did not say which HP model he has bought. I had problems with a HP Z400 (incompatibility with a SAS controller). A slightly newer HP Z440 resolved this issue.
I use Ansible Playbooks to deploy everything in my Homelab and I absolutely love it! All my services are Docker containers and I can use Ansible to do other stuff like copy config files and setup directories in addition to spinning up the container. Its highly repeatable and gives me a single touch point for all of the configuration options for each Docker container. Highly reccommend!
U need openstack
I use OpenZFS in my 16GB desktop, no problem. I maximized the amount of memory cache (L1ARC) OpenZFS can use to 4GB.
I combined the Virtualbox Hypervisor and the OpenZFS File System and 6 desktops in one computer. Virtualbox and OpenZFS are running on a minimal install of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and access to OpenZFS folders is assigned through the Virtualbox shared folders. My desktops are 6 Virtualbox VMs. The first VM runs 24/7 and is the only one with open ports:
– communication and social media VM (Xubuntu 24.04 LTS), running evolution; transmission; kde-connect and MS-Edge for WhatsApp; Skype; FB-Messenger;
– banking VM (Ubuntu 16.04 ESM), encrypted by Virtualbox and running the latest stable snaps of Firefox and LibreOffice (Calc);
– multimedia VM (Ubuntu Budgie 24.04 LTS) running Lollypop; SoundKonverter; Openshot and Shotwell;
– a VM for app try-outs and experiments (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS);
– my jukebox VM (Windows XP Home) to play the wma copies of my LPs and CDs with WoW and TrueBass effects 🙂
– just in case I need it (Windows 11 Pro).
In April 2019 I did spend a whopping $349 on the hardware of the 2nd slowest Ryzen ever; the Ryzen 3 2200G; 16 GB DDR (3000MHz); 512 GB nvme-SSD (3400/2300MB/s) and I reused 2 HDDs (1 TB and 500 GB) and a 128 GB SSD as their SSD cache (L2ARC). The hardware still runs fine, but every year I need slightly more memory. In 2019 I could run 4 Linux VMs, now it stops at 3. In the past I would run the Windows 10 update in parallel to a Linux update and I don't like that anymore. The performance is still good Xubuntu and Budgie boot in ~7 seconds, but in the past it was closer to 6.5 seconds 🙂 So the raw performance is in small steps reduced due to more complex software, so after 5 years it is time for a mid-life upgrade.
End 2023 my 2 HDDs did reach 10 power-on years and they died shortly after each other and I replaced them by a new 2 TB SMR-HDD, no SMR slow down issue here 🙂 For my midlife upgrade I will buy this week 2x 16GB memory, they are on offer on a walking distance. I will use it to increase the display memory from 1 GB to 2 GB and the L1ARC from 4 GB to 8 GB and I will increase the memory size of Windows 11 from the clandestine 3 GB to the official 4 GB again 🙂
In the summer I intend to buy a Ryzen 5 5600G, who is 3 times faster than the Ryzen 3 2200G 🙂 🙂
https://youtu.be/osa7VYQCLtg?si=4jX1Es_JyQwfzDNL
Old workstations and servers are very power hungry. If energy costs are a concern dint buy anything older than 2018. No to mention a modem and or intel is way more powerful than even old Xeon cpus for the same cost or less long run
Server racks are loud because they're compact, lots of small very fast fans to push air through small spaces. If you use a larger 3U or 4U server chassis for your builds, you can use quiet desktop size fans from Noctua or whatever and just build a quiet PC, on a rack. You may find that a larger server chassis will actually be easier to build a PC from scratch in, as they typically have a lot more room inside than a standard desktop case. Data centers are trying to maximize space efficiency by cramming as much as they can in a given footprint. Home labs don't have to be so dense, so they don't have to be loud.
I have a small rack. I wish it was larger. My racked servers are very quiet, quieter than my gaming PC. The next PC I build, I'm going to build on the rack. I want to put all the noise and heat from my desktops away on the rack and have a nice silent home office. I'll just run a cable to a hub in my office and have my monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. there, but no fans. Currently, I have an Unraid NAS on it that runs some other services as well with Docker. I got a little Raspberry Pi cluster with Kubernetes doing some other things, mostly for learning about Kubernetes. I got a decent, but fairly cheap network switch, and I have a dedicated firewall/router box. I put a few small mini PCs on the rack as well, which I am eventually phasing out. None of it really cost me all that much. The hard drives were the biggest expense, because I got a lot of them. Most people don't have my data storage needs.
Anyway, I'm very excited to follow this journey you're going on. Every home lab is different and there's no one right way to do anything. Whatever you end up doing will be educational to all of us, even those with more "advanced" set-ups who've been doing home labs for longer than you. I think it will lead to some fun conversations and sharing of info in your comments as well.
I suggest you to go all in with UNRAID, uninstall proxmox. I have an NVIDIA gpu with a passtrough in Plex container, with that I’ve HW acceleration on Plex that is amazing. Also I use unraid to share network directories and VM staff.
You shouldn't use proxmox for your use at the standing desk, instead you should consider a low power machine like a raspberry pi at the standing desk that remotely logs in to a vm on the proxmox machine or something. Use a kvm switch to maintain the ability to use your keyboard mouse and monitor with your proxmox machine